At First Things today, Jody Bottum (one time Dylan Q&A subject) questions whether Christians ought to respond to slights with armed resistance in order to get respect in the media.

Well, probably not. But why, in fact, shouldn’t we? Violence works, after all. The mere threat of violence works.

Here’s a recent example: I’m on the board of a literary magazine at a small state university, and, at the board’s meeting this spring, the editor mentioned that he had wanted to reprint the blogger Iowahawk’s hilarious swipe at the archbishop of Canterbury. (If you haven’t read it, it’s worth a look: A description of the archbishop’s mention of a British application for Shari’a law, told as a lost Canterbury Tale, in pseudo-Chaucerian English.)

Unfortunately, the editor said, the magazine couldn’t reprint it. The legal adviser from the university’s administration had said no—not on the grounds that it was offensive to Anglicans and their archbishop, but on the grounds that it mentioned Islam, and the school could receive bomb threats as a result of publishing it.

He goes on to reflect on the evolving reasons for the double standard that is applied when it comes to portraying Christianity, versus Islam, in a negative light.

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